Issue #122

It began at home with the pain. Hot, searing pain as if there was someone inside my head, jabbing out at the back of my eyes. It was enough to drop me to one knee on the spot, a headache suddenly worse than I would’ve ever thought possible. I don’t know how long I was lying there, but they had to call me from work, asking me why I hadn’t shown up yet.

My hands were covered in blood. I don’t know where it came from. My nose was bleeding a little, but not enough to explain the amount of blood I saw around me. There were also scratches, up and down my arms, no idea how they happened.

Maybe when I fell.

I went to the doctor the first time this happened, the first time I “left myself”. I was so scared. He couldn’t find anything wrong, other than maybe my blood pressure issues had caused me to pass out. I think he was full of shit, but the moment came when he left to find a nurse to do a blood draw and I looked at myself in the mirror.

The person looking back wasn’t me.

It was like some kind of malevolent entity was wearing my body, like clothing. The eyes that were supposedly mine glared out at me. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that much hate. It was like I was laughing at the sight of myself.

Next thing I knew, I was waking up in the middle of the hospital. The nurse had found me, curled up on the floor of a janitor’s closet, raving about something in the room.

“James, do you know why you’re here today?”

Right. I’m in the shrink’s office now. I looked up at him, the officious prick in a nice suit, with the clipboard and then down to my hands on the table, the blood isn’t there anymore.

“I…”

The prick had thrown me right out of the story I was trying to tell. How was I supposed to say anything that made any sense when he kept interrupting me?

“You were talking about being at the doctors office…” The idiot seemed to think that he needed to prompt me.

“I god-damned know what I was talking about, why don’t you just shut up for a minute.”

“James do you know why the court sent you here?” He asked.

“How the hell should I know that?” The guy just gets me so sidetracked. Fucking prick.

“Do you remember how you got the blood on your hands James? The blood you saw the doctors office, because it wasn’t your blood, was it?”

“You should go fuck yourself.”

“James—”

“No, right up the old Bomb bay doors, right up there. Fuck you, and the judge too.”

That put the prick back on his heels least. The guy leered, back in his chair, looking like he was trying to remember what his training had told him to do in this situation.

“James, I understand why you have this hostility.”

“You don’t understand shit.”

“James I think it would be easier if—”

“Stop saying my name!”

The guy blinked at me, shaking his idiotically sculpted forehead as he did so.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

“My name! It isn’t going to get me to relate to you or calm down any faster. Just knock off the bullshit!?”

“Okay James, no bullshit. Can you tell me what you remember about that day? Do you know what you did?”

“Do you know what I did?”

Dr. Doctor didn’t even answer, and instead settled for clicking his pen and glancing at the clock, as of this whole charade was somehow more irritating to him, than it was to me.

The thing is, I can’t really remember for sure why I ended up here on this couch. It happens sometimes, blackouts and my memories get lost inside of blood red storm clouds. I can’t even piece together sequences of events in my head. I wake up. I eat. I sleep. I work. All of those things, but not necessarily in that order. When I try to hard to remember, all I get is the pain.

It’s like there’s some foreign army of that’s invaded my consciousness, trying to consume me from the inside out. Sometimes I think that this body is just a shell, worn by something made up of total darkness.

“James?”

I close my eyes and leaned back, trying to get the annoying sound of his voice out of my head. Maybe I could just wait out the session, killing him with silence until my time just runs out.

“James?”

I’m feeling it again. The pain, pressing out into my eyes, and even as I start to reach up to massage my forehead, I know where this is going. I see the doctor’s office, my hand streaked with blood. I feel the other presence, the one down deep in the dark that I can never quite succeed in eliminating.

And then I have the blackouts, my little mental vacations that, I think, give me the ability to do all these fun little nasty things that I want to do without realizing it.

Take this prick, the sheep in sheep’s clothing, this doctor of a man who thinks he’s going to find out what’s wrong with me. I’m going to bet he has no idea what’s barreling down the tracks at him. This is my chance, the only one that I’m likely going to get. There are cops out there in the hallway, but no one is keeping me from going out that window. No one but this doctor.

I’m starting to feel that pressure, pushing against the inside to my eyeballs. My eyelids are starting to droop a little. Time to take another one of those mental vacations. There’s a collection of vintage surgical tools in the display case back there. I can see them over this idiot’s shoulder.

I wonder how sharp they are.